AEFP Live Handbook is incredibly useful. Great experience too as an editor and an author!

The Fall Edition of the EPI Newsletter is here! mailchi.mp/umich.edu/ed... Stay up to date with the latest in education policy research, events, & publications. In this issue, you'll find: 📚 Research shaping education policy 📝 Publications and news 🤝 Research partnership updates

Welcome @edpolicyford.bsky.social to Bluesky!! Give a follow for research and happenings from our fantastic UMich faculty and students.

Ughh… the Child Care and Early Education Research Connections website and library will no longer be available after Sept. 30. Pull what you need! researchconnections.org If there is an effort to back it up underway, I’d love to know.

Incredibly cool… Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers is supporting the music program in my rural WV county: wchstv.com/news/local/r...

📢 #EdWorkingPapers: How can we measure student behavior at scale? @tiffanyxwu.bsky.social, @weilanch.bsky.social, @mattadiemer.bsky.social, Rebecca Unterman, @annakshapiro.bsky.social, & Thomas Staines use PCA and factor analysis to build behavior composites from admin data. 📄 bit.ly/4ofre5b

Today is the final day of work for many dedicated, talented employees at the Institute of Education Sciences. I am thankful for their service, and I hope that they find new roles that continue their mission of supporting education research that serves as a public good.

Researchers examine the impacts of transitional kindergarten, a publicly funded learning option that bridges prekindergarten and kindergarten, helping guide state programming and offering more information on the complicated early learning landscape. ➡️ bit.ly/3Sfrp1t

Big shout out to this amazing team, led by @weilanch.bsky.social Want more details but don’t have time to read the paper? See thread from @tiffanyxwu.bsky.social

🤔 What kind of Pre-K experience sets students up for long-term success? Our new working paper offers important new evidence to help answer this question! 🔗 edworkingpapers.com/sites/default/files/ai25-1194.pdf And 🧵👇

Using data from Michigan, we find that third grade retention for struggling readers may be a much less important component of the benefits of literacy reforms than previously understood. (Thx, @annenberginstitute.bsky.social, for the dissemination bump!)

Does school funding actually improve outcomes? 🤔Join our first-ever #EdWorkingPapers webinar Wed 5/21 at 2pm ET with @emilyrauscher.bsky.social and @chriscandelaria.com to find out. buff.ly/TW1oFhu #research #schoolfunding

🧵 But since Head Start's inception, there have been disagreements about whether or not the program "works." So let's review what we know from rigorous research on Head Start's effectiveness, and let's start with what it means for the program to work. 🧵 1/n

How federal investments in education research help students succeed www.brookings.edu/articles/how...

We asked 1,368 public school-based pre-K teachers across the country about the materials they use, their instructional resources and planning time, and how their programs align with elementary grades. Read more in my new co-authored report: www.rand.org/t/rra3279-3

Hours after we published this story on our site we received news that staffers in five of Head Start's 10 regional offices were put on leave. We're trying to track the on-the-ground implications -- please email me at [email protected] or Signal cas.37 hechingerreport.org/head-start-i...

Head Start, which serves over 800K children and their families all over the country, was hit hard today by the HHS layoffs. <1% of HS’s annual funding is spent on federal staff. nhsa.org/press_releas...

Georgetown has put together resources for federal workers who may be facing a transition in jobs. These include various seminars and workshops, as well as tuition scholarships providing a discount on many master's programs and certificates. Please spread the word to anybody who might benefit.

As universal prekindergarten (UPK) expands, understanding which community-based organizations (CBOs) apply—and why—matters for equity and access. With @weilanch.bsky.social, Meghan McCormick, Catherine Snow. Read more: edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1151 #ECE #UPK #EquitableECE #EduSky #WomaninQuant

If you have research dependent on these data here is my suggestion 1/N Big picture: Create a dataset of cell means (cells must be big enough to pass disclosure) - load these cell means into many, many tables & put through review -These cell means can then be used in OLS - which runs on means

In a devastating week for Ed research, #AEFP2025 is a balm to the soul. That goes double for the fantastic presentations by junior scholars. Today's UMich contributions, spanning early childhood, K-12, and higher ed:

Check out the livehandbook.org, an open-access resource that will be continuously updated to serve as a hub of policy relevant #educationresearch. @weilanch.bsky.social and I coauthored a chapter on ECE quality. This kind of initiatives bring me hope in challenging times for the education field.

I keep hearing the question: What's the biggest impact of Trump education disruptions so far? My answer: Research. Data. Knowledge on how students are doing and how schools might improve. All of this is being decimated. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/u...

The dismantling of NCES is insane and will critically hobble progress in improving education - this agency is so important it existed more than 100 years before the creation of Department of Education.

Heartbreaking to see announcements of major layoffs at most research organizations that have played a vital role in supporting federal statistics for education and developing high-quality evidence about what policies/practices actually work. Below are just a few examples from my LinkedIn feed.

Despite the federal chaos, states+cities are still hard at work figuring out how to best to expand early opportunity. Case in point: WA's Transition to Kindergarten is under debate in the state legislature again this session. Our op-ed on getting WA TK right: www.spokesman.com/stories/2025...

Yesterday ~68 people employed in HHS's Administration for Children & Families early childhood offices were terminated. I'm told Office of Head Start lost ~20% of staff; Office of Child Care lost ~25% These workers process grants for preschools/childcare centers, monitor health/safety issues, etc.

FANTASTIC ICPSR at U Mich is coordinating the archiving of at-risk federal data (all of it?) You can upload data you have & search for data you don’t have www.datalumos.org/datalumos/

Thread of my own work that has used data from Department of Education and columns that have focused on research funded by them 1/N Inequality in college graduation rates Uses data from Education Longitudinal Study, conducted by Department of Education www.nytimes.com/2015/06/02/u...

Find out how much federally funded education programs benefit students in **each congressional district** in the US In this crucial new dashboard tool @UmichPoverty poverty.umich.edu/federal-educ...

Every Child Left Behind

Hearing from a govt contractor that Dept of Education is terminating What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) contracts. WWC is a website that rigorously evaluates education policies, programs, and products to determine what's effective and not. It's an invaluable tool for school, district, state leaders

🌟 Did you know that most federal education data are archived in the @urbaninstitute.bsky.social Education Data Explorer? It's a great resource for research and analysis - and there's even a full API version linked in thread. 🌟 #EduSky #EdPoliSky #EduSkyECEC educationdata.urban.org/data-explorer

Re: the cuts to overhead from NIH grants: The leading category of study at NIH is cancer research, an area that has produced breakthrough drugs to extend survival for people with blood cancers. As the parent of a child who not long ago finished treatment for blood cancer, this policy makes me weep.

Welcome! The Youth Policy Lab has joined BlueSky! Follow us to learn how we are informing public policy decisions that impact youth by analyzing data and evaluating programs to help society answer its most pressing questions. #youthpolicylab #youthpolicy

Educators and journalists: Here is a link to 8 journal articles that document the harmful effects of immigration enforcement on kids' educational outcomes, school attendance, and well-being.

🌟 alert!

High-quality curricula can move the needle on early learning, but implementation varies widely. We’re excited to start 2025 off with a new effort to systematically measure implementation readiness & target supports at baseline: fordschool.umich.edu/news/2025/u-...

Nobody’s definition of early education quality: 14-year-olds working unsupervised in child care centers.

Highly entertaining and interesting profile of Catherine Snow, in her last of 45 years of teaching at the Harvard Ed School. www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/ed-mag...

At APPAM today? See @paolaguerreror.bsky.social in action! Count Me in? Identifying Factors That Predict Centers’ Application to Boston’s Mixed-Delivery Universal Pre-K Program 1:45-3:15pm, National Harbor 6, 2nd Floor Ballroom Level, Gaylord National Harbor

#APPAM2024 I am going to attend APPAM 24. Young scholars, if you want to talk about your research or discuss your next steps, do not hesitate to reach out if you think I can be of any help. No-so-young scholars, please talk to me!

Massachusetts has made big investments in ECE but there’s still much to uncover about how to better support early educators. Wrote about what we know so far, key questions to answer, and potential for building capacity to do so. #EduSky #ECEsky 👇🏽 wheelockpolicycenter.org/partnerships...

Really appreciated @tiffanyxwu.bsky.social and @weilanch.bsky.social highly intuitive explanations of how machine learning algorithms improve upon parametric approaches - my brain was buzzing with potential applications, and also their graphics are 😍

Hadn’t seen a women in education policy research starter pack yet. Please let me know if I missed you… still getting my bearings in the new place. go.bsky.app/PixwBrM

Hello new friends! 👋 I’m Tiffany. I’m a PhD candidate at UMich interested in edpsych 🧠, early childhood 🎒, and machine learning 🖥️. I make pretty pictures using #rstats once in a while (👇). Looking forward to (re)building community & learning from + with y'all! #EduSky #introduction

New academic nightmare: Had a dream I was named editor of a journal I’d never heard of, no take backs.

Researchers! Is there a research partner you've worked with who you could nominate for the AEFP Use of Evidence in Policy & Practice Award? This award recognizes individuals working outside academic or research orgs (e.g., at ed agencies, non-profits)... 1/2

Great to see you here!! Prof. Guerrero-Rosada does great research on early childhood care quality, the most important issue in this scientific & policy space IMHO.

Created a starter pack focused on early care and education research and policy. Hoping to grow this list so please let me know if you'd like to be added or have other suggestions for who to add! go.bsky.app/SpVmXZP